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The Jewish blindspot to the horrors of the niqabTuesday October 31st, 2017
Sir Salman Rushdie spoke at Montreal’s Jewish Public Library last week. We were two of an estimated 700-strong (mostly Jewish) audience.
Rushdie’s insightful and entertaining address on “literature and politics in the modern world” was excellent, but the evening’s most noteworthy moment arrived with the Q&A, when, inevitably, his response was solicited regar...

Honouring Lord Balfour, who made Israel possibleTuesday October 24th, 2017
This coming November 2nd marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which with its portentous words, “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…” may be the most consequential foreign-policy statement in modern history.
Theodore Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, famously said, “If you will it...

The TDSB steps on another politically correct landmineTuesday October 17th, 2017
Out of desperation to claim title as the most politically correct institution in Canada, the Toronto District School Board has made itself a target for mockery twice in the last month.
Last week, the TDSB announced that, out of respect for Indigenous peoples, it was going to retire “chief” from its senior staff nomenclature, changing such honorifics as “chief of social work...

Liberals left reeling by clear, rational criticisms of M-103Wednesday October 4th, 2017
With Parliament’s passage in late March of Motion 103, which condemned “Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination,” the Canadian Heritage Committee was tasked with a study to determine “what Canadians have to say” on the motion. Now underway, formal hearings are revealing what polls have already made clear: many Canadian...

Boycott Roger Waters, rock legend and rabid Israel haterTuesday September 26th, 2017
Art and political activism make awkward bedfellows. They become unethical bedfellows when activist artists bully politically neutral colleagues into complicity with their cause.
In 2013 lead Animals singer Eric Burdon cancelled an appearance in Israel, intimidated by the relentless anti-Israel “pro-peace” zealots of the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) camp...

This could destroy our civilization, but we don’t talk about itWednesday September 20th, 2017
Menace of war is the “hermit kingdom’s” stock in trade. For the first time, two weeks ago, North Korea threatened an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on North America that could cause disaster on a scale we can barely imagine—yet a disaster that, unlike an actual nuclear strike, would not directly kill a single human being.
In its sixth and most powerful nuclear...

An old truth packaged in a new study: fat is good for youTuesday September 12th, 2017
Humans die quickly if utterly deprived of fat. A high-fat, carb-free life produces lean, fit bodies
Healthy eating and weight management are both obsessions in my family. There are no food regimes known to man that have not been followed by one or more of us in our quest for the magic bullet that will keep us trim in perpetuity without catching the Grim Reaper’s eye prematurely.
...

Quebec’s niqab ban is progressive. The NDP apparently isn’tTuesday August 29th, 2017
In their Sunday night French-language debate in Montreal, four NDP leadership aspirants gingerly navigated the minefield of Quebec’s Bill 62, nearing enactment, which will ban face coverings in the delivery and reception of publicly-funded services.
As good leftists one and all, Charlie Angus, Guy Caron, Jagmeet Singh and Niki Ashton oppose any such ban in their multicult...

France finally admits to its history of Jew hatred. What about the present?Tuesday July 25th, 2017
July 16 marked the 75th anniversary of the infamous 1942 mass roundup of French Jews in Paris’s Velodrome d’Hiver (“Vel d’Hiv”), when 13,152 Jews were deported to Nazi death camps. Benjamin Netanyahu’s motorcade arrival at the commemoration ceremony, his limousine sporting gold-fringed Israeli flags, was an electric moment for French Jews, representin...

Misandrist mother sure to damage her vulnerable sonsTuesday July 18th, 2017
Last week, motivated by a sense of duty, I took my nine-year old granddaughter to the film Despicable Me 3, my first exposure to this popular series. It turned out to be no chore at all; I laughed with a child’s abandon throughout.
Except, that is, for one sobering moment, at the hero Gru’s reunion with his long-unseen, toxic mother. She had pushed him into a life of crime (f...

Bring on the sex robots and make our world a better placeWednesday July 12th, 2017
In the case of controversial sex bots, which seem to me a victimless fetish, I find myself remarkably unoffended, even somewhat boosterish at their potential for alleviating human distress
At Toronto’s Idea City last month, where I spoke, no fewer than four presenters addressed the fast-approaching era when beef will be replaced by plant-based proteins. At a breakout session,...

Doctors who conscientiously object to providing euthanasia referrals should not be forced to do soWednesday June 21st, 2017
Conscientious objectors shouldn't be shunned for merely holding to the originalist criterion of their vocation.
From June 12 to 15, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice heard legal arguments relating to conscience rights for doctors in Ontario. Five doctors and three physicians’ organizations want the court to declare portions of policies created by the College of Physicia...

The West's willful blindness to the threat of Islamist terrorism knows no boundsTuesday June 20th, 2017
In January 2016, a 24-year-old woman in Mannheim, Germany was reportedly raped by three migrants. At first, she identified them to police as German nationals, later explaining her lie as reluctance to “help fuel aggressive racism.” Then, astonishingly, she wrote a letter of apology to her attackers in which she blamed her society for their crime, saying “I wanted an open Eu...

Kathy Griffin just learned a tough lesson about free speech — sometimes, people tell you you’re firedWednesday June 7th, 2017
Pity naive comedian Kathy Griffin. She discovered, to her cost, there are limits to tolerance for edgy humour, even amongst the entertainment world’s most irreverent, Trump-loathing denizens.
In a now-infamous photo released by photographer Tyler Shields on Twitter last week, a deadpan Griffin holds aloft — in mock ISIL-style trophy mode — the bloody, lookalike “head” of Donald Trump....

Scheer should ensure fathers have the same parenting rights as mothers in child custody disputesWednesday May 31st, 2017
My success rate for failed predictions remains unsullied. Just as I confidently predicted Donald Trump would never win the primaries, and then just as confidently predicted he would never win the presidency, I likewise predicted that Maxime Bernier was a shoo-in for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race.
I paid scant attention to the winner, Andrew Scheer, during the race, and now am...

A lone academic dares to challenge accepted narratives about Canada’s residential school systemTuesday May 23rd, 2017
As the token conservative on otherwise liberal panels, I have been a regular contributor to CBC radio’s comedy news trivia program, Because News, since September 2016. I was let go from this panel last week for my politically incorrect views on indigenous cultural appropriation (that I did not even express on CBC). I can now empathize (as opposed to merely sympathize) with t...

Why does a report on ‘gender equality’ in mental health all but ignore the illnesses of men and boys?Tuesday May 16th, 2017
In a column last March, I described the radical progressive mind’s inability to see iniquities on the left and its fixation with right-wing evil as the ideological equivalent of a neurological syndrome called “hemispatial neglect.” Those afflicted with hemispatial neglect lose recognition of space on one entire side of the body. It isn’t that they have a desire to see what’s on the side that is...

Why does a report on ‘gender equity’ in mental health all but ignore the illnesses of men and boys?Tuesday May 16th, 2017
In a column last March, I described the radical progressive mind’s inability to see iniquities on the left and its fixation with right-wing evil as the ideological equivalent of a neurological syndrome called “hemispatial neglect.” Those afflicted with hemispatial neglect lose recognition of space on one entire side of the body. It isn’t that they have a desire to see what’s on the side that is...

In landlord vs. religious Muslim couple, no one won. Everyone lostTuesday May 9th, 2017
Years ago, my then-lawyer son was seeking affordable lodging in Manhattan. He discovered many landlords wouldn’t rent to lawyers: too quick to litigate small grievances. This was a permitted form of rental discrimination? Yes, according to my son, who wouldn’t have conformed to that stereotype, but was penalized for it anyway.
I wondered about the discretion allowed to Canadian landlords....